Washington, DC (January 18, 2017)– Leading companies in the U.S. geothermal industry have told President Donald Trump’s transition team that “Geothermal is Good for America."

In a brief paper outlining the state of the geothermal industry and technology, the Geothermal Energy Association (GEA), the industry’s trade group, said “Geothermal delivers a triple bottom line to our energy system: It is an abundant domestic energy source, it brings economic benefits in the form of taxes and long term high-paying jobs, and it has one of the lowest Levelized Costs of Energy (LCOE) of all power sources in the United States."

"We hope the new Administration will recognize the benefits of geothermal energy," said Karl Gawell, the Geothermal Energy Association’s Executive Director. “Their leadership in addressing some of the daunting obstacles facing geothermal development could mean positive change for the industry."

The industry group paper spells out other benefits of geothermal including support for a reliable, modern power grid. “Known to be a baseload generation technology, advancements in geothermal production make it possible to provide ancillary and on-demand services, such as load-following or energy imbalance services, spinning reserves, non-spinning reserves, and replacement or supplemental reserves. This helps load serving entities avoid additional costs from purchasing and then balancing intermittent resources with storage or new transmission."

GEA also points to producing strategic minerals from geothermal resources as another new advantage. "Exciting opportunities in extracting minerals from geothermal brines could bring the U.S. new sources of lithium, zinc, manganese, potash and rare earth minerals, now dominated by China," according to GEA.

The industry paper tells the President-elect that they are facing daunting impediments to development. "The US is the world leader in utility-scale geothermal production. Unfortunately that lead has been slipping as asymmetrical market-subsidies undercut new US geothermal development, federal regulation created duplicative hurdles to development, and investment in new technology development by the US has lagged," GEA reports.

"There are over 30 Gigawatts of geothermal capacity in the U.S. with 83 active projects (over 1,250 MW) stuck in development limbo," GEA points out. To move geothermal forward, the trade group calls for risk reduction in drilling and exploration, certainty and parity in tax incentives, and streamlined permitting on public lands.

A full copy of "Geothermal is Good for America" will be available at: www.geo-energy.org. Press should contact karl@geo-energy.org for a copy.

About the Geothermal Energy Association:
The Geothermal Energy Association (GEA) is a trade association comprised of U.S. companies that support the expanded use of geothermal energy and are developing geothermal resources worldwide for electrical power generation and direct-heat uses. For more information, please visit http://www.geo-energy.org. Subscribe to GEA’s newsletter here. Follow GEA on Twitter. Become a fan on Facebook.